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Jodie Turner-Smith Says Raising A Biracial Daughter Is Helping Her ‘Heal’ Feelings Around Colorism
Jodie Turner-Smith Details How Raising A Biracial Daughter Is Helping Her Heal
The Queen & Slim actress Jodie Turner-Smith, 36, explained to Elle magazine how raising her daughter Janie — whom she shares with husband Joshua Jackson — is helping her come to grips with issues of colorism that she struggles with.
Jodie told the mag that her daughter will have a “completely different experience” than either of her parents as she is both Black and white.
“She is going to have a completely different experience in the world than I did, because I have given birth to a mixed-race girl.” Turner-Smith’s daughter turns 3 next month.
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“It’s interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world.
When Turner-Smith fell in love with her husband, 44, her feelings shifted.
“To decide not to have a child with somebody you love, just because they’re white, was insane to me. But, at the same time, I did have this mini pause, where I was like, ‘She’s going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I’d always felt a little bit tormented by,’ ” Turner-Smith acknowledges.
“Now that I’ve got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons,” she continues. “I’ve been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colourism.”
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